YouSaid · the spoken record

Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan

lines on the record: 75
first: 2021-12-06
most recent: 2021-12-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you want to reach us, our email address is h-bt at npr.org. If you want to follow us on Twitter, we're at how I built this or my account at GuyRaz. You can find us on Instagram, at how IbuelbuiltIas NPR, or mine at guy.roz. This episode was produced by JC Howard with music composed by Ramtin Era Bluey. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Murashima. Our production staff includes Casey Herman, Julia Carney, Elaine Coates, Farah Safari, Liz Metzger, and Harrison BJ Choi. Our intern is Catherine Cipher. Jeff Rogers is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. This is NPR”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lower balance and Mac McCon, founders of Merge Records and members of the band Super Chunk. The band was on hiatus for much of the early 2000s, but over the past 10 years, they've been back forming together live and in studio. In fact, they have a brand new single just out. It's playing behind me right now, and it's called Endless Summer.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just want to ask one more thing about the two of you, because of course this isn't just a story about the label or about Superchunk. It's a story about your relationship. What do you think explains the success of your business partnership? From your perspective, why do you think it's worked? You were boyfriend, girlfriend in your 20s, you split up, and now you guys are in your early 50s, so you can look back and laugh or fondly remember it. There's that connection that's gone. But still, your business partnership and your friendship has really survived and thrived. Why? What explains it?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you think that what happened with Merge and the influence it had to do with just getting lucky, like just luckily finding the right artists, or do you think it had to do with the strategic and hard work approach that you guys took?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you think about the journey you've been on, right? I mean, thirty years, I think you celebrated your 30th anniversary as a band and label in 2019. Could you ever imagine that 30 years later we'd be talking about the band and the label as these really influential kind of iconic institutions in independent music in America?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are very few record stores compared to when I was a kid, obviously. I think I read that in 1994 there were like a billion record shipped by 2007. It was like half of that by today it's probably half of that. I mean, this has not been a good time to be a record label. And somehow you guys have been thriving, growing. What explains? I mean, people are going to Spotify. buying records, they're not buying CDs. So what explains the fact that you guys are... Doing better than okay.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you want to make a lot of money throughout most of the 20th century, you would become a newspaper publisher because you would print classified ads and it was like printing money. If you wanted to make a lot of money in the 50s, 60s, 70s, you could start a record label, right? I mean, the guys who started Atlantic, people were making money, but if you wanted to lose a lot of money in the last 20 years, you'd start a record label. Because music went digital. I just went to Amoeba Records, a legendary record store in Berkeley, California. And it's just wonderful. You walk through there and it's like there's records and there's vinyl and there's CDs. And it reminds me of when I was a kid and I'd go to Tower Records in Los Angeles. Just such a powerful feeling.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So once that record came out, and all of a sudden you didn't have the support to staff, how did you, what did you do? How did you cope with that?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, they have sold millions of records. I think funeral probably close to a million and definitely suburbs more than a million. Just to put this in perspective, that's a lot of money. That's tens of millions of dollars in record sales. I mean, you guys said you weren't prepared for it. I know that you weren't thinking in terms of money and business, but I mean, it was like a lottery ticket in some ways, right? I mean, it just like the fact that they sold so many records obviously reflects on how good the music is, but also resulted in merge becoming more than just a small little indie label.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, how do you explain? And maybe there's no explanation. Maybe it's just fate or whatever, but how does that happen? I mean, I mean, this record, their first record funeral, certified gold in the U.S., which means it sold more than half a million copies. Double platinum in Canada, Platinum in the UK, why this record, I mean, obviously it's an amazing album, but still you need people to notice it and to talk about it. Just some things kind of take off.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have to imagine that that record and then their subsequent records really helped grow, merge by an order of magnitude. It's sort of like I think of Bloomsbury Publishing, that it was a small publishing house in London, and they signed an obscure writer named J.K. Rowling in 1997 or something, like 10 years after it was founded. And then, of course, Bloomsbury publishing became enormous because Harry Potter became that series the Bible. Was arcade fire sort of like that for merge?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is the next, I think, hugely pivotal moment for the label. You released arcade fires funeral. That band would go on to become your best-selling band on the label. How did you guys even get connected with arcade fire? Because, I mean, not only do they become a hugely commercially successful band, they won Grammys and work after the year and Alban of the Year and all this stuff, like hugely on lists of best albums of all time. How did they come across your radar?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is there something that ever came to you that you guys did miss and then somebody else picked it up and then you heard it and you were like, oh my God, we missed this.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And did you, I mean, as you sort of got better and better known in that first decade, were you just being inundated with demos?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm curious about your selection process, right? I mean, how did you guys and how do you make decisions? I mean, do you just listen to thousands and thousands and thousands of demos over the years? You like one, that's how you pick. I mean, what's your criteria?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Record stilt was on many lists of best album, one of the best albums in the 90s. I'm assuming that must have been the first time that a merge record got that much attention.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Want to ask you about a record that you released in 1998. So eight years in, nine years in. The record's called In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by the band Neutral Milk Hotel, for people who don't know that record, hugely influential, became just a hugely important cult record among a certain kind of music lover, indie rock or whatever we call it called, College Rock, whatever it was. I love this record. It's a beautiful record, I'll just be honest with everyone listening. How did you come across that record? Because it was a slow burn. It wasn't like a huge hit right away. It didn't become a cult record for many years until after it was released. How did it come to you? How did you guys get that record?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want to ask you about what I think is probably one of the turning points in Merge, because I think it would take at least a decade before you were even barely profitable, right?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Disagreements ever get into shouting matches? I mean, I can't imagine either of you ever shouting because you're so soft-spoken and chilled out, but maybe this is just in the interview. I don't know. Did you ever shout each other?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How did the two of you have there been times let's say after you split up, right, and you're running this label where you guys had some significant enough differences between the two of you that there was a chance that Merge wouldn't survive it?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They trust you Yeah, because they know that, or they hope that they're not going to get screwed by you. I should have mentioned that for most of the first decade of the 2000s, Super Trunk just took a hiatus. You just really kind of stopped the band and focused on the label.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it's almost like Super Chunk was like your, I mean, I hate to put in these crude terms, but today, like we talk about social media marketing, right? And so Super Chunk was your kind of like the publicity arm. I know it wasn't, but it sort of was because people who like the band then learned about merge and then it created this momentum.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So here's what I'm trying to figure out. You're basically spending most of the 1990s touring and also simultaneously building this label while also kind of dealing with the aftermath of your relationship. A za going on, but why would a band go and work with you if they could go and work at that time, if they could go work for a bigger label that would give them a bigger advance?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the thing, right? Because Superchunk was the band. Merge was the label. I don't know if one of those alone would have worked without the other, right? Because while you guys were touring, I imagine you would meet other bands while you were touring and playing festivals. And then probably people heard more and more about merge records. And so there was kind of like this cycle, like this ecosystem that was formed. People saw you perform or knew about the band. Met you guys and then people say, Oh, you should check out, talk to Mac and Laura because they've got from Superchunk because they put this label. Is that right? Is that those two things were connected?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really, like you're grinding away. You're doing a lot of touring. Here's what's interesting about that. Superchunk never became, I think I'm right to say, and you're still around, but it never became like hugely commercially successful. It had a huge, strong fan base, but is it fair to say, like, never became hugely a huge commercial act, right? And just to be clear, if you had only done Superchunk just from a business perspective, could the two of you have had sustained your lives and your family's lives and paid your mortgage and your bills and all these things, had you only done Superchunk?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And sometimes that decision in a band can lead to a number one hit like don't speak by no doubt, because she wrote it about the other someone else in the band that they split up.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you're like 26, 27, you're still really young, but a really kind of mature, little Decision. I mean, I guess maybe, I don't know. I remember when I was 26. I don't know if I would have made such a mature decision. I think I would have been like, screw you, this done. Goodbye. But really, that's why, and maybe people listening are like, well, why are you so surprised about the decision they made, Guy? But I'm just telling you thinking out loud here. I do think it was a mature. And we've had stories on the show of couples who, you know, EO products, the founders divorced, and they kept going. Amazing story. Stacy's Peter Chips. You know, they had a split, but kept it going.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I'm curious about is at this point, mergers is only three and a half years old, and so was Superchunk. They were still new. Neither of them were making a lot of money, but clearly you saw something in those two things that even though it was still early days and you were far, far away from becoming sustainable in any way, you saw something in merge and even in Superchunk that convinced you guys to work through your personal differences.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And singing songs that may have been connected to, I don't know, maybe not, but you know. Connected to love or relationships or feelings, and I mean, that must have been hard to be. That's hard.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we come back in just a moment, how Laura and Mac keep their businesses together even though they have split up, and how Merge eventually makes a big bet on a little known band called Arcade Fire. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this from NPR. Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's nineteen ninety three and Mac and Laura have just ended their romantic relationship after being together for about five years, but they are still very much together, very much partners when it comes to the record label merge and their band superchunk, but maintaining that delicate balance is not easy.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, at this point, I think around 92 or 93, the two of you split up. You are no longer together as a couple, which, you know, I mean, that's a long time to be together, even though you were super young. But it's still a long time. And imagine that was not easy. But here we are today, I mean, 25 years later more, 30 years later still talking, the two of you, and clearly you're not together. You both have your own families, but your business partners. Then when you split up, A couple you had a band together and you had a business, this merge label together. So what did you have a conversation and say, let's keep this going? It like that mature an adult?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, initially the band, you would sign a band, and by signing it, you wouldn't even do a contract. It would just be like, yeah, we're going to ask you guys to commit to three records with us.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it would save you because you couldn't afford to do that. You guys didn't have the cash. So they would like. Print the records and all the labels and everything, and you guys would be the Distributor”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the meantime, you had your own label. At what point was there a band that kind of came that you said, who's the first band you signed? It was built originally for your own band, but also to distribute other music. Was it mostly like Chapel Hill bands that were coming to you?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your record no pocket for Kitty comes out. It's around the time, maybe like a month after, never mind, by Nirvana comes out, which really kind of there's an explosion and attention to small labels and all of a sudden just an explosion. And then the major record labels kind of realizing that these bands in Seattle and indie bands are potential gold mines. But around that time, you guys started to get a lot of media attention, right? Like people were saying, oh, this is the next Superchunk is the next breakout band. Do you remember that?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did you feel like you had to tour a lot because that was the primary source of revenue and income for you guys? Is that a factor in why you toured so much and you performed live so much?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But as you started to Get some more airplane stuff, you know, on college stations. Could you just focus on Supertunk or did you still have to have other jobs?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here's where I wonder. You graduate from Columbia, you go back to Chapel Hill, you're a full-time job now, Mac, is Superchunk and Merge. And I think Laura at that point, you still had another year of college left. But what I'm trying to figure out is how do the economics of this work, right? Because, yeah, I mean, Superchunk was gaining sort of a cult following on college campuses, and you were touring, but you were never in the billboard charts, right? You never had mass, you were never selling like... Hundreds of thousands of copies of your records. But in those early days, where the economics such that you could actually live off what you were making from superchunk?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was like three, four, five thousand bucks. We'll pay you this advance. We'll cover the costs of the record and the distribution.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right around the time you signed to Metador, you also changed the name of the band from Chunk to Superchunk, right? And do you remember what the dollar amount was when you signed with Matador? Was it tens of thousands of dollars? Was it thousands of dollars? Hundreds of thousands”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Meantime, you put out for chunk, you put out some music on this label merge that you have, and this is complicated because I read that in early 1990, you signed a deal, a record deal with a record label called Matador, which went on to release huge bands and become a really successful label in and of itself. You signed a three-record deal, the band Chunk does, with Matador records. So it's a little complicated. Can you kind of break that down for me and help me understand why you would do that if you already had your own record label?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess you were going to start simply just producing singles and cassettes, but even to do that, I mean, did you have any money, any startup money?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was just you just called it merge records and it kind of lived in, I don't know, your apartment, Laura, or your dorm room or something. Yeah.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that makes sense You record some tracks. You've got the label going. By the way, out of curiosity, did you form like, I mean, you're still in college, both of you. Did you form like an LLC? Did you, Mac, I mean, I'm just projecting here, but your dad was a lawyer. Did he help you guys set up the business? Did you do any of that?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But did it, if in fact it was about just distributing and printing and doing all this stuff for Chunk, why did you even need to create a label?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You guys had a band because I know that. Later that summer in 1989, you actually recorded some songs, your first few songs you recorded at a studio. But what did having a label mean? The label that you had would be in charge of like getting the record pressed and getting artwork made and then getting it to record stores. Is that what the role of the label would be?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we come back in just a moment, how Laura and Mac juggle the demands of launching a new record label while managing a band and their own relationship, stay with us on Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Ross. So it's the summer of nineteen eighty nine, and Mac and Laura are back in North Carolina after a road trip to Seattle, and this turns out to be a pretty eventful year because not only have they started a band called Chunk, they've also decided to start their own record label. To the idea of starting a label come out of frustration with major labels or with the fact that none of your bands were signed, no, it was not, had nothing to do with that.”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because Mac a couple of previously had already been involved in pressing vinyl records, and it was just a thousand records, but still you kind of knew that it wasn't this scary thing, that it was possible to actually make records and sell them”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, you had this band called Chunk, but how did the idea come about to start a record label? How did that conversation even start? Was it on that road trip?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you guys form this band, and that summer you took a road trip to Seattle. And in Seattle, from what I understand, you guys actually went to the sub pop offices. To meet with Bruce Pavt and Jonathan Ponneman, who've been on the show before. Did you guys go there for any specific reason thinking maybe you could sign your band to their label? Why did you go visit Subhophop?”
2021-12-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT